Economic motivation for implementing targeted responses to rangeland degradation often lag the events that cause degradation and existing monitoring schemes often lack the sensitivity or the connections to ecological processes to reliably serve as a basis for evaluating success. In this paper, we present an approach for quantifying the relationship of economic output and land degradation during the intermediate stages of degradation. We also propose an approach that can provide enhanced incentives to implement proven responses before degradation processes are entrained.

This paper presents an assessment of renewable energy resource potential and the current status of exploitation in Kenya. As an importer of petroleum fuels, Kenya spends a substantial amount of foreign reserves to import oil. The oil import bill in 2008 consumed 55% of the country's foreign exchange earnings from exports. On the other hand, there is a high dependence on wood biomass energy, leading to an imbalance in its supply and demand. This has exerted considerable pressure on the remaining forest and vegetation stocks, thereby accelerating the processes of land degradation.

In South Africa, the relative extent of range degradation under freehold compared to communal tenure has been strongly debated. We present a perspective on the processes that drive rangeland degradation on land under communal tenure. Our findings are based on literature as well as extensive field work on both old communal lands and ‘released’ areas, where freehold farms have been transferred to communal ownership.

Studies to understand litter processes and soil properties are useful for maintaining pastureland productivity as animal husbandry is the dominant occupation in the hot arid region. We aimed to quantify how micro-habitats and combinations of litters of the introduced leguminous tree Colophospermum mopane with the grasses Cenchrus ciliaris or Lasiurus sindicus influence decomposition rate and soil nutrient changes in a hot desert silvopasture system.

Agricultural management has its roots in the manipulation of the system to optimise conditions for crop production. It is now widely recognised that this could result in land degradation with subsequent serious impact on crop productivity if the nutrient losses to the agricultural system are not replaced. A nutrient budget is an account of gains and losses of nutrients in an agricultural system, a tool that could be used to develop sound nutrient management and sustainable agriculture.

This article investigates the effects of wheat genetic diversity and land degradation on risk and agricultural productivity in less favored production environments of a developing agricultural economy. Drawing production data from a household survey conducted in the highlands of Ethiopia, we estimate a stochastic production function to evaluate the effects of variety richness, land degradation, and their interaction on the mean and the variance of wheat yield. Ethiopia is a center of diversity for durum wheat and farmers manage complex variety mixtures on multiple plots.

The island of Sri Lanka is free from serious natural hazards such as volcanic activity and earthquakes resulting from climatic extremes, but there are impacts of many natural disasters, such as landslides, floods and droughts, the intensity and frequency of which are increasing due to human interventions. Some areas of Sri Lanka are also periodically subject to cyclones that occur due to climatic conditions and geographical locations.Land degradation denotes all natural or anthropogenic processes that diminish or impair productivity of land.

Two well-known ancient sites in southern Anatolia were selected to investigate and quantify the impact of historical land degradation on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. These sites are the Luwian settlements of Kelenderis (modern Aydıncık) and nearby Nagidos (Bozyazı), both in Mersin Province and both occupied since around 4000 BP. Changes in local climatic conditions over this period have produced variations in the rates of fluvial transport of sediment/soil from the hinterland into the relevant deltaic regions, thus influencing rates of coastal progradation and aggradation.

Expert judgements are potentially a valuable source of information in land degradation assessment, especially in areas where data paucity impedes the use of quantitative models. However, expert opinions are also much disputed because they are not tested for consistency, abstain from formal documentation, while their quantitative interpretation is inherently unidentifiable. This paper evaluates and formalizes the use of expert judgements to conduct a nationwide water erosion hazard assessment in Ethiopia.

The island of Sri Lanka is free from serious natural hazards such as volcanic activity and earthquakes resulting from climatic extremes, but there are impacts of many natural disasters, such as landslides, floods and droughts, the intensity and frequency of which are increasing due to human interventions. Some areas of Sri Lanka are also periodically subject to cyclones that occur due to climatic conditions and geographical locations.Land degradation denotes all natural or anthropogenic processes that diminish or impair productivity of land.

Land degradation leads to decline in soil fertility and low yield of crop. The study investigates the causes of land degradation, and adoption of soil conservation practices using a two-stage decision making process. The data for the study were collected with the aid of structured questionnaire and analyzed with descriptive analysis, difference regression equation and simultaneous probit model.